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Sports/XB Live Streaming

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VoltRay

The impending (and foolish) decision of MLB to sign an exclusive deal with DirecTV a la the NFL package got me thinking about how I’m going to enjoy the 2007 season of my beloved St. Louis Cardinals.

Obviously this stuff applies to most sports, but I’m just going to focus on MLB since that’s all I know.

I wasn’t all that likely to purchase the baseball package through my cable provider this year anyway—I’ve had it in the past and just didn’t have time to watch all the games, play video games and have a normal social life. But, as someone who does not live in the St. Louis area anymore, I’ve always wished you could buy and view games a la carte. I just don’t need to see all 18 games between the Cards and the Brewers.

Enter mlb.tv. I love that you can purchase and stream games a la carte, but never got into to it due to the fact that it’s just not fun to watch a game on your computer and in the past the quality has been shoddy—though I think that’s improved greatly.

I have 2 questions: 1) Specific: Does anyone know if I’d be able to stream the mlb.tv live games to the 360? I assume that I can DL the archived games and stream those since they are windows media, but what about streaming live games?

B) General: Wouldn’t it be cool if MS partnered with the sports leagues to provide channels for streaming live games to the 360? I imagine they could stream fighting and racing events as well. I have no doubt that my brother would pay 300 points for European F1 races that he can’t see because he doesn’t get Speedvision. There must be a shiteload of revenue in that for all concerned and by offering a la carte, it offers us a real alternative to expensive and bloated packages. I’d settle for lesser quality video for this.

For me, this is an excellent implementation of Video Marketplace, which is really cool, but currently trumped by Netflix and my DVR (for me).

I’m aware that IPTV may already be considering these things and may make this discussion obsolete, but it’s all an unknown at this point—specifically whether they’d even be able to deal with the NFL or MLB after this disastrous DirectTV deal.

Comments (2)

H
hubristes·
GO CARDS! I'm originally from St. Louis, too. I'm not even a huge sports fan, but it was part of the St. Louis culture and I miss it. I try to catch the sporadic Cards/Rams/Blues game but its tough.\r \r IMHO, besides just paying for content, advertisers still haven't realized the full potential of streaming and/or downloadable content in general. As the advertising money grows I think we'll have some cool services in the next few years.
F
Fetal·
yeah, television companies are just starting to realize the power of streaming video feeds. all the major networks and a few of the basic cable channels already have streaming video sites up with a few select prime time dramas. it seems like they're having a hard time finding advertisements outside of their own corporations to pay for this service. some companies, like target, tylenol and various insurance agencies have already moved into this market, but they're not really target advertisers for sports.\r \r as for the cardinals...hey, they're series champs, but the red sox are due this year. lol